Welcome to the first edition of our weekly newsletter for 2025! In this post, I’ll look at how government tech media marked the new year with a number of articles that took stock of the developments – both positive and negative – of the past year as well as what the coming year might have in store.
Looking Back at 2024
If you’re looking for a snapshot of the major government tech news from the past year, several publications provided roundups and synopsized their biggest 2024 stories. Here are a few:
- Federal News Network Editor Jason Miller brought together a panel of five current and former government tech officials to get their opinions on the top accomplishments and challenges of 2024. The result will not shock you: Most of their comments revolved around cybersecurity and AI.
- Breaking Defense ran a series of articles looking back at the top Department of Defense (DOD) tech stories of the year. These included one by Carley Welch on how global conflicts have ignited ambitious plans to rev up Pentagon IT and cybersecurity capabilities in 2024. Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. wrote a piece that looked back on how the Pentagon began using AI chatbots in 2924 for varied purposes such as summarizing complex regulatory documents and drafting procurement memos. Ashley Roque reported that in 2024 the Army increased its focus on getting tech into the hands of soldiers faster. Also, in an interesting experiment, Lee Ferran fed the contents of every 2024 Pentagon press briefing into ChatGPT and then asked it about what those briefings said about Defense trends for the year.
- Lisbeth Perez also provided a roundup of the top Defense tech stories of the year for MeriTalk, including updates on developments on programs ranging from the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program to the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) cloud initiative. Also in MeriTalk, Weslan Hansen looked at the past year’s advances in quantum technology, and Cate Burgan wrote a remarkably comprehensive overview of the year’s highlights in federal AI.
- In Space News, Jeff Foust reported that 2024 saw a record number of global space launches, driven largely by SpaceX.
- Sarah Sybert, managing editor of GovCIO, published a list of their top stories for 2024 that included coverage of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s post-quantum cryptography standards and AI news from the Department of Health and Human Services and DOD.
- And to make sure you didn’t miss any cybersecurity news during the tail end of the year, David DiMolfetta of Nextgov/FCW gave us a roundup of late-breaking news, such as the latest victim of the Salt Typhoon attack.
Looking Forward to 2025
We also noted quite a few pieces that looked ahead to the stories we can expect to see in the coming year:
- In Washington Technology, Nick Wakeman looked both backwards and forwards, listing several government contractor stories from 2024 that he will be watching for new developments in 2025. Washington Technology also shared its annual overview on “what will matter, not necessarily what will happen” in 2025, by Ross Wilkers. (To hear more from Nick and Ross, check out our interview with them on the W2 Communications “Gov & Beyond” podcast.)
- Jory Heckman of Federal News Network reported on five trends to watch in 2025 related to veterans’ health issues, including a reboot of the Department of Veterans Affairs electronic health records program. Also at Federal News Network, Justin Doubleday went deep on the “murky” outlook for CISA in 2025. Also, Tom Temin looked ahead to the next steps for DOD cybersecurity and the CMMC program, and Anastasia Obis wrote about Space Force plans to focus on international collaboration in 2025.
- Nextgov/FCW published a couple of head-spinning 2025 predictions from contributor John Breeden (example: “the parallel universes and simulated world theories will merge”).
- In the world of state and local government, Chris Teale of Route 50 published a piece looking ahead to AI trends, both technical and regulatory. Teale’s colleague Kaitlyn Levinson reported on how law enforcement agencies will embrace AI and other technologies in the coming years to promote public safety. Levinson also interviewed a couple of experts for her article on how state and local governments can improve cybersecurity staffing in 2025.
A New Year’s Cyber Attack
Transitioning to the present, possibly the biggest tech story of the week occurred just as we were about to ring in 2025. On December 31, a slew of reports on a major Chinese cyber attack targeting the Treasury Department made headlines across the media landscape – including the government tech pubs:
- DiMolfetta reported that the breach was due to a third-party tool that was not approved under the government FedRAMP cloud security framework.
- In CyberScoop, Derek B. Johnson noted that the attack was able to remotely access several Treasury user workstations as well as “certain unclassified documents” maintained by those users.
Now that we’ve had a comprehensive look back at 2024 as well as a tentative look ahead to the coming year, we’ll get back to tracking the media’s ongoing coverage of the ever-evolving world of government technology. Come back next week for more!